02 November, 2015

Review – Halo 5: Guardians

By
Kyle Shimmin

Never has there been so much ONI in a Halo game before; slick,
black, and manipulative the word is never far from lips in the campaign and somehow it has even managed to worm itself into the multiplayer too. If that’s not reason enough
to pick up Halo 5: Guardians then I guess you should check out the rest of the
review?

Halo 5: Guardians

As with all traditional shooters I hit the campaign first,
and despite having already watched the bombastic and somewhat anime-inspired
opening cinematic, I was swept off my feet once again. When Fireteam Osiris
finishes its raucous descent of a Covenant-covered snow drenched mountain, the
game gives you control of the team’s leader Jameson Locke – you do play as
poster boy Master Chief too but more on that later. I then assumed that in
typical shooter fashion you would pick your way through a handful of bands of
Covenant at a measured pace, as the game explains its systems. I was mostly
wrong, you’re in a warzone; Jul M’dama’s Covenant is locked in heated battle
with the planet’s Forerunner defences, and both are in your way. Osiris is
there for Dr Catherine Halsey, previously head of the Spartan II project,
creator of Cortana (the Master Chief’s late AI companion), and more recently
traitor to humanity. The action felt fast, too fast for Halo or for an opening
level, if there was a pause it was because I allowed there to be, Halo 5
provided me the space, enemies, and means to enjoy a gameplay experience in the
opening minutes that previous titles in the series spent hours building up to.

The newfound intensity isn’t like the speed of the Call of
Duty series, don’t worry it is still very much Halo, just refined by the high,
silky framerate and bolstered by new movement and combat options. Hit the A
button while jumping at a ledge and you’ll clamber up, hit B and a direction
and your thrusters will kick in, perfect for escaping a grenade or clearing a
gap. You can charge and unleash a ground pound while in the air by using the melee
button, and if you aim down the sights while airborne your suits thrusters will
hold you in place allowing you to take stable shots. There’s also shoulder
charging while sprinting and that’s useful in and out of combat; certain walls
can be smashed aside, as well as a knee slide which I’ve only ever used to look
cool.

If you are familiar with other first-person shooters of
recent years, you may recognise many of these abilities, and I had my doubts about
their inclusion after playing the Halo 5 multiplayer beta earlier this year. I
really can’t say whether the developer 343 Industries tuned and tweaked them,
or if I just became better acquainted with the abilities in the campaign, a
place free from the frustrations of competitive multiplayer. Regardless I’m now
one hundred per cent on board, and similarly accepting of the option to aim
down the sights. While it may sound like a totally minor addition, the aiming
Call of Duty championed years ago has until this game never been present in the
Halo series; in the past some guns like the Battle Rifle allowed you to scope
in but that was mechanically quite different. Just like the movement options,
the multiplayer beta didn’t sell me on it, yet now it feels like a totally
fine; you’re not necessarily encouraged to aim down the sights, shooting from
the hip is still completely viable. I tend to aim down the sights only when at
range, meaning the close and mid-range action remains largely from the hip,
unlike in Call of Duty where snapping down the sights is pretty much essential
at all ranges.

The level design has changed substantially; partially to
accommodate the new forms of mobility, but also to allow four players (using
online co-op, or AI teammates) to fight effectively. Many areas are larger,
more complex and vertical, with side passages accessible through vents or destructible
walls, this of course allows for more enemies and at times allies. Halo has
always had large open spaces, when I describe the levels of Halo 5 as larger I
mean that all aspects have grown; what was once a corridor is now a maze of
interlinked corridors, medium sized combat arenas have grown to large but
retained their density and fidelity of cover and vantage points. It is the
perfect venue for Halo’s signature sandbox action, easily making Halo 5 my
favourite playing first-person shooter in recent memory. Destiny, the MMO-ish
shooter from Bungie, the original developers of Halo, took the Halo combat
formula in its own direction, one I find sorely disappointing; the action of
pulling the trigger and head-shotting a Fallen is wonderful, but it’s level
design and weapon options are all so woefully flat, streamlined rather than
developed further. Halo 5 could not be more divergent, and all the better for
it, yet the campaign offering is not without its flaws.

While the on foot action is the best it has ever been,
helped by the tweaked Promethean (Forerunner) unit roster, the vehicular
sections feel by comparison slower and for the most part underwhelming, they
remain fun but haven’t evolved at the rate the core combat has. Although Halo 4’s
Mantis, the bi-pedal mech armed with a machine gun and missile launcher makes a
triumphant and explosive return. The sequence – almost every Halo has one –
that see’s you boarding a huge moving vehicle didn’t feel epic in the least; it
is bigger than anything before it, but it has up until that moment existed
solely in the background of other battles, never once posing a threat to you
nor its other enemies. Worse still, actually boarding and taking the beast down
me perhaps a minute, it didn’t at all feel like an accomplishment – I’ve had
more troublesome battles with single Ghosts.

Furthermore on the normal difficulty, which is usually what
I play just about any game on the first time round, I completed the entire
fifteen mission campaign solo in just 5 hours 27 minutes 56 seconds,
depressingly short for a first-person shooter campaign and especially a Halo
game. I’m playing through once more on legendary (the hardest difficulty level)
and it is of course taking longer, but it still seems easier than most if not
all of the previous games, in no small part due to how it handles death. Halo 5
features a down-but-not-out revival mechanic, allowing squadmates to revive
fallen comrades rather than wait for a respawn or return to an earlier
checkpoint, it’s a system I wholly approve of given the structure of the combat
encounters.

You’re never alone in Halo 5, you will always be accompanied
by three Spartan squadmates, whether they’re your friends through online co-op
play – there is no split screen option – or the AI. The latter you can issue
orders to, albeit simply ones like; kill that thing, or go over there. The
orders don’t always work, the intelligence of the AI is questionable, so too is
their ability to shoot, but what did we honestly expect? It remains a neat
dynamic and I only really noticed their stupidity when playing again on legendary. The campaign switches between Locke’s
Fireteam Osiris, a squad of fresh and diverse Spartan IVs, and Master Chief’s Blue
Team, the last remaining and decidedly dated Spartan IIs. The campaign split
isn’t equal like you might imagine, and functionally their only difference is
that Locke can ‘ping’ the environment with the new Artemis system, picking out
points of interest, weapons, and ammunition. It’s actually extremely
disappointing that the Master Chief can’t do the same; the game explains it
with a line of dialog claiming Locke asked for the system specifically, but I
honestly cannot think of a reason why you wouldn’t also want the Chief to be
able to scan.

The story goes to some really fascinating places, both from
the perspective of the universe and some of the characters in it, but the way
it gets to those places is problematic. It’s not simplistic like the Bungie
Halo stories, it is rather like the Halo 4 narrative in that it involves a lot
of characters, none of whom are explored in any depth, and delves deeply into
the history of the universe, but again doesn’t adequately explore what that
means. I’ve read/watched/played/listened to almost every piece of Halo fiction
there is, the only exceptions I am aware of is the latest Troy Denning novel,
and the Frank O’Conner short story, I’ve started both but not finished either.
Bearing that in mind, I was astonished by some of the events of this narrative;
you see places and take part in actions that I never would have hoped to see in
the form of a game, and the setup for Halo 6 is captivating. If you haven’t
kept up with the lore and backstory, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend starting
now, a lot of the recent material has been downright dull. However, go in blind
and you’re not going to know anything about any of the characters, or truly
understand the significance of what’s happening. Now that’s not to say you
won’t enjoy seeing it through, but if I didn’t already have a vested interest
in the fiction of the series then this game would have felt like a backhanded
slap from a storytelling standpoint – say what you will about Halo 4, but at
least it had a firm ending, a resolution. Halo 5 has the very real potential to
disappoint in that regard.

The pacing of the story is also flawed; when you’re shooting
or watching people punch each other it’s awesome, but Halo has always had
quieter and more atmospheric scenes in which the story unfolds. Halo 5 is
either action or nothing. There’s radio chatter and audiologs in missions –
also skulls, but no terminals – unlike previous titles there are several dead
stops, where you are confined to an area surrounded by NPCs and told to hit
some buttons or check in on someone. The idea being you walk around and listen
to the conversations and you can but there’s really nothing there that couldn’t
have been conveyed better in a longer, better directed cutscene or two. The
cutscenes that do exist look visually amazing and are well choreographed, but
they don’t do a good enough job at telling you why anything matters. It is
difficult for me to explain with the problems more specifically, because doing
so would require spoiling key plot points.

Just like I can blast holes in the campaign that I loved at
times, I can and will do the exact same to the competitive multiplayer. Let’s
start with the new and rather unique Warzone game mode because Halo 5’s most
egregious issues sprout from that. It’s a large (12 versus 12) mode, with
matches that tend to last upwards of fifteen minutes. The two teams spawn on
either side of map, with three initially neutral buildings between them, a team
can win be either capturing all three locations then destroying the core of the
enemy team’s base, or by accruing 1000 victory points. These points are granted
for killing enemy players and for eliminating AI controlled targets that appear
around the map. The harder to kill ‘legendary’ bosses are worth 150 victory
points each, meaning Warzone can be a great source of last minute comebacks and
epic swings. There’s also a Warzone Assault variant that places one team in the
role of attacker, trying to take the locations from the other team, though mode
this lacks the AI-controlled enemies. There are three Warzone maps, each with a
modified version for Assault.

Warzone is a blast; it truly capitalises on the chaos of
large-scale Halo action by sprinkling the AI units around, providing multiple
avenues to victory and plenty of ways for individual players to contribute
without needing to be masterful at the combat. To me it feels like an evolution
of the Invasion mode introduced in Halo: Reach, but much like the campaign it presents
a wider breadth of gameplay options. Unfortunately, Warzone is the central cog
in Halo 5’s poor implementation of microtransactions. Unlike every other
instance of Halo that I can think of, no weapons or vehicles spawn on the maps
themselves, to use either REQ (requisition) cards must be spent. These cards
come randomly assorted in tiered packs, purchasable with in-game currency (granted
for playing matches) or real world money; they contain single use weapons,
vehicles, and boosts (like overshields), as well as permanent cosmetic items.
Primary weapons (all human) can be used infinitely when unlocked.

The cards that can be used in a match are limited by a
regenerating energy meter; the bigger equipment like tanks aren’t available
until the later stages of a match. But that doesn’t mean it’s balanced, because
your ability to spawn one in the first place is predicated by the contents of
your REQ packs. For example, at the time of writing I have played more than
thirteen hours of multiplayer and unlocked (single uses) of the following
vehicle’s; three types (different skins) of Mongoose, three types of Scout (no
turret) Warthogs, three types of normal Warthogs, and Ghosts. Worse still, I haven’t
yet gained the ability to use the DMR, a human primary weapon. I should also
point out that I bought the deluxe edition of the game, which came with additional
REQ packs and have put £10 more into this hellish system. That you can pay for
REQ packs doesn’t bother me on its own, I myself frequently purchase similar microtransactions
in other games, to expedite customisation unlocks for example. But the way they
are implemented in Halo 5 is such that they adversely affect the balance of the
game, what used to be part of the experience is now restricted to random rolls
of a loaded dice. I can think of few ways they could have been integrated more dreadfully.

Now you might be thinking, just play Arena, the more traditional
multiplayer experience. Well you could but you still won’t find vehicles on any
of the maps. There are very few game modes currently available and Big Team Battle
isn’t one of them, there are at most half a dozen different modes and a
reasonable selection of maps, though they vary considerably in visual quality. Perhaps
half of them look great as you would expect, but the other half look suspect at best, some
of these are I believe made using the Forge map editor – which isn’t yet in the
game – and use almost texture-less walls and harsh flat colours as if pulled
from an early last generation title.

One ‘advantage’ of Halo 5 including microtransactions is
that all future map packs will be free, meaning they can be fully incorporated
into the map hoppers for all players, the player base will no longer be
fragmented. Furthermore, the absent map-creation mode called Forge is due to be
released sometime in December. I don’t believe however, that it’s inclusion
will fully flesh out the game’s offering; unlike the previous three Halo
first-person shooter titles, 5 lacks any co-op mode outside of the campaign –
which has always been co-op . Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach both had the
compelling wave-based Firefight mode, and Halo: 4 had my personal favourite,
the episodic story-rich Spartan Ops mode. In some ways Warzone partially plugs
that gap with its AI enemies, but as we’ve already discussed it has its own
issues, and at its core it is a competitive player versus player mode.

Halo 5 boasts a strong art direction, which gets to run wild
in some new and magnificent locations, the series has always featured some of
the most impressive skyboxes and this game is no different. As I’ve mentioned
it runs like butter at 60fps, the trade-off comes at the resolution which is
variable, in other words it will decrease during intense scenes in order to
maintain the framerate. The only dip in fidelity that I noticed was that once
or twice distant enemies appeared to have jerkier animations. With the
exception of some of the Arena maps, Halo 5 looks sharp and sounds thunderous.
The weapon effects boom and crack with terrific weight, though the soundtrack
didn’t move me in the way the series has in the past. The music lacks the
drum-heavy action of Halo 4’s soundtrack and doesn’t aim to capture the choirs
of the earlier games either. It has its moments, and includes the Mantis theme
from Halo 4 which I genuinely appreciated, but it didn’t hit when I expected it
too and rarely felt epic. Most of the time I failed to unconsciously notice the
music at all.

Halo 5: Guardians plays exceptionally well. It offers my
favourite first-person shooter action of this generation, perhaps ever, no mean
feat considering how many great titles there have been in recent years. Intelligent
level design, finely-tuned movement options, and the silky 60fps framerate all
elevate the signature Halo sandbox action to unprecedented heights. This is all
undermined however by the inadequate story telling of the extremely short campaign,
the relatively paltry offering of game modes, and most deplorably of all, the
microtransactions that literally gate your access to weapons and vehicles. Halo
5 has lost a lot of what Halo games have previously offered, such as dedicated co-op modes, and the Warzone mode, damaged as it is by the effects of the
microtransactions, doesn’t do enough to offset this. It’s a good game; it could
have been great had it not been harpooned by issues from almost all conceivable
angles.